Thursday, May 31, 2012

The
Cyber-Siesta: Computer boot-up time remains a constant
60 seconds over many computer generations. Show me a petaflop machine, and I
will show you a machine that must do 60 quadrillion floating-point operations
just to turn on.

Hellerstein’s Limit: If you keep your computer loaded with the
very latest software, then over its lifetime it will do at most twice as much
work as it did in the first 18 months.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

What
are we humans here for? I propose that the Gaia, a self-adjusting biosphere,
cultivated our evolution to perform four tasks. We are well on the way to
completing the first task, we have started on the second, and we have made
plans for three and four.

The
first task is:

Reclaim Carbon.

There
are vast stores of carbon abandoned underneath Earth’s surface, in the form of
gas, oil and coal. Meanwhile the planet has been suffering from recurrent ice
ages. Greenhouse gases would prevent more ice ages; these gases are released by
fire, which our kind is good at making. Our kind survived several ice ages by
the use of fire, and in the current interglacial, we have been taking steps to
ensure that the ice does not return.

Some
have theorized that ancient Chinese rice farming released enough methane to
ensure that the North American continent is not now under a kilometer of ice.
So we’ve been changing the climate for a long while now; to our advantage.So far;
but excess would be to our disadvantage. If we burn up enough oil, then the
climate will warm, the icecaps will melt, the oceans will rise, and this will
flood out the coastal cities…

… and
thus self-limit the process, in true Gaian cybernetic style!

Assuming
that civilization survives completing the first task, then our second task is:

Eat the Asteroids.

By
asteroids I mean the Earth-crossing asteroids. There are hundreds of them out
there, boulders and flying mountains, all playing tag with our planet. Every
hundred million years or so one of them collides with the planet, andthere’s a mass extinction. This is an
intolerable state of affairs, and I propose that we do something about it.

So I
say that we set our greediest corporations, run by our most ambitious
billionaires, out on a quest for gold and glory. Let them mine the
Earth-crossing asteroids to oblivion in search of precious metals, but also
carbon and water, just to keep the operation growing. Let them blast and smelt
and leave behind rubble.

Thus
they’ll save the planet, and at a profit too. How Gaian!

The
first task is well under way, we have started task two, but so far we can only
speculate about tasks three and four:

Terraform Mars.

Move Earth Out.

For the
Sun is warming up, and in a billion years time it will warm Earth enough that
water will escape its atmosphere, and the oceans will dry up. Yes, that’s only
a billion years, not five billion years. Four gigayears lost! An intolerable
state of affairs; something must be done.

So we,
or someone at least as clever as we, ought to move Earth’s orbit out from the
Sun, and do so before a billion years are up. I’m not sure we’ll be the ones to
do it; it’s too easy to temporize.

But I
am mildly confident that we could at least terraform Mars. It’s not a job for a
corporation, nor even a government; it would take a religion. But I think we
could do it, and so reproduce Gaia; and we’d do it just to have neighbors to
complain about. Again, how Gaian!

This
blog post continues earlier blog posts about time paradoxes. Here I simplify
them to their technological minimum.

Imagine,
as before, that there are time-phones, capable of sending a signal to the past.
Consider a Time Bomb; that is, a bomb, whose trigger signals to the bomb
through a time-phone. The Time Bomb, if triggered, explodes before it was triggered. This would
destroy the bomb, and the time-phone, and the trigger; therefore the bomb was
not triggered; therefore it did not explode; therefore it was triggered; therefore
it did explode; and so on!

Is the Time Bomb ever triggered? And does it ever explode? I
know of two resolutions to the paradox: odds-bending and alternate worlds.

In the odds-bending hypothesis, the
time bomb’s trigger is never pushed, no matter what.If the trigger is otherwise easily pushed,
this means that improbable events can intervene to prevent the triggering. If
you set up the trigger to go off automatically unless event X happens, then
this bends the odds in favor of event X. This effect has obvious technological
uses.

In the
alternate-world hypothesis, there are two parallel worlds, one in which the
bomb explodes and so does not send the trigger signal to the other bomb, which
doesn’t explode and does send the signal. To observers in either universe, the
time bomb either explodes without signaling, or signals without exploding,
seemingly at random. They can’t predict the outcome beforehand because both
outcomes come true.

Which
hypothesis is correct? Or is it a mixture of the two; odds-bending up to a
point of high improbability, and then alternate worlds? My own speculation is
that the transition probability is about 1 in 10^100; that being the measured
density of cosmic dark energy, divided by the theoretical density of vacuum
energy, given quantum mechanics.

So I
speculate that the Time Bomb’s trigger almost never goes off; that strange
events prevent triggering; but if events would have to be too strange, (that
is, less than one chance in a googol) then the trigger goes off after all and
the bomb did not explode, or the trigger does not go off but the bomb explodes;
and this result at random.

Friday, May 25, 2012

She looked
on the table. She looked on the couch. She looked under the cushions.

“Where is
she?” Sogwa said. “Where’s my Hanny?”

Poor Sogwa!
Normally so bright and brave, now so small and scared. She looked for her
Hannah doll, but couldn’t find her. She’d lost her favorite toy, and she felt
awful.

She thought
she’d left her Hannah doll in her lunch box, as usual, and she looked, but
Hannah wasn’t there. Nor was her Hannah on the shelves, or in the closets, or
under the sink.

Sogwa
searched her bedroom. Her Hannah wasn’t in the dinosaur diorama, and Sogwa knew
this because she asked all the tiny dinosaurs, and they all sqeaked, “No Hannah
here.” Sogwa looked in the castle, the beach house, the pet store, and the
shoebox; but Hannah wasn’t there, nor in the necklace box, or the cabinets, or
the clothes drawers, or the toy chest. Sogwa looked on the Moon, but Hannah
wasn’t there; nor was she in Transylvania, or under the sea, or on the
spaceship. Sogwa searched her library, from bottom to top, but Hannah was
reading neither the encyclopedias on the floor or the old baby books near the
ceiling. Sogwa even looked in the Blue Basket, where the Old Favorites rest.
But no Hannah.

She
squeaked, “Where is she? What’ll I do? How’ll I live without my Hannah?”

Sogwa’s Dad
talked it over with her. He said, “Let’s use the process of elimination. Is
your Hannah doll at school? At aftercare?”

“I saw
her there. I know. I looked at my lunchbox at recess.”

“If it’s at
school, then we’ll check lost-and-found tomorrow.”

Sogwa
moaned.

Her Dad
said, “Maybe it’s in the car, or at the store.”

Sogwa cried,
“I looked in the car! I looked all over the car!”

Her Dad
said, “If you left her at the store, that’s not so good.”

“Where would
she be?”

“Who-knows-where.”

“But that’s
as good as gone!” Sogwa wailed.

Her Dad
hugged her and patted her and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll find it, or else ...”

“Or else
what?”

“Or else we
won’t, you know. But even if we don’t, we do have another Hannah doll.”

They went to
the Blue Basket, and sure enough the just-in-case replacement Hannah doll was
there. “But it’s not the same,” Sogwa said, clutching the doll to her chest
anyhow.

Her Dad
said, “It’ll have to do. I checked the Web, and they don’t make that kind of
doll anymore. You’ll sleep with that one tonight, and check lost-and-found
tomorrow. And Mommy has already called the store. Tomorrow, if we must, we’ll
call the police.”

Sogwa ran to
the living room, clutching the replacement Hannah doll, even though it wasn’t
the same. She ran back to the couches to look under the cushions again.

In her
bedroom her Dad said, “Huh!” Then he called, “Come here, dear.” When she
arrived, he said, “What’s this?” And he flipped back some of the covers on her
bed.

“IT’S
HANNAH!” Sogwa yelled, flinging the replacement aside.

Sogwa hugged
and kissed Hannah, while her Dad picked up the replacement and put it back into
the Blue Basket. Then he smiled, and he kissed Sogwa. He said, “So Hannah was
folded into the covers on the bed, right? All this time? The whole day?”

“Yes,” said
Sogwa, rocking her doll.

Sogwa’s Dad
said, “Aha! But you saw Hannah at school, right?”

That was a
poser. “I thought I did.”

“Exactly!
You thought so! It was the thought you saw!” He leaned close, tapped her
on the head. “You had all the Hannah doll you needed, in your mind.”

Sogwa and
her Dad then agreed that it would be best to make Hannah a house doll, and not
bring it to school every single day, and risk maybe someday leaving it
who-knows-where.

The next
morning, there was a funny kind of switch. Instead of Sogwa getting up as usual
to go to Sogwa school, taking her Hannah doll, it was Hannah who got up and
went to Hannah school, leaving the Sogwa doll behind.

Sogwa napped
on the bed, perfectly content. Then she heard a strange sound; a kind of
whooshing and hooting. It came from the Blue Basket; the one that held the Old
Favorites.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Sogwa was
visiting the sea-view deck at Fort Funston. It had been a busy day for her; she
had walked a long way. Her paws ached, her legs were sore, and even her tail
was tired.

It was
midday, which is sleepy-time for cats; and it was warm; so she went to the
secret clubhouse clearing in the bushes. There in the cool and the shade she
sat and closed her eyes.

Suddenly
Time stopped. Waves stopped splashing, the wind stopped whistling, the windsock
stopped flapping, leaves of the bushes stopped rattling, people stopped
talking, the seagulls hovering in the stiff sea breeze stopped going SCREE
SCREE, and a boy’s bouncing rubber ball froze in midair. The world was as still
as a picture.

Sogwa too
was frozen in the moment of time, so she couldn’t move; not left, not right,
nor up nor down; so instead she went inwards. Sogwa entered the Forest Behind
The Eyes.

It was weird
in the Forest Behind The Eyes. Lightning flashed in a cloudless night sky. The
moon was full, and wolves howled. Snakes hissed and rattled underfoot. Owls
with sharp beaks and claws dived at Sogwa. Undead monsters dug themselves out
of the ground. The trees had skeletons hanging from them. Sogwa went to the
very center of the Forest Behind the Eyes, where it was darkest and scariest,
where she found the Castle in the Woods.

The Castle
in the Woods looked millions of years old, and it smelled it too. There were
hoots and creaks and screams. It had spooks, cobwebs, scuttling bugs and eeking
rats. There were trapdoors to a black hole underfoot. One corridor had a stream
of blood running down the middle, with vampire bats lapping at it. Another hall
was full of disembodied hands scuttling around. Another hall had plaques on the
wall, each one with a head, and the heads on plaques bounced off the wall and
chased Sogwa into another hall, where she ran right into a moving knight
statue. She bounced off it and ran, yowling, up a spiral staircase. The
pictures in that staircase had eyes; and those eyes tracked her as she passed.

The highest
room of the highest tower was the throne room. There Sogwa found an old man
with a long white beard. He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the air,
hovering five feet above a big poofy pillow. His eyes were shut and he was
quietly humming.

Sogwa said,
“Who are you?”

The old man
murmured in his sleep, “Father... Time...”

Sogwa said,
“What is Time?”

“Cheese...
cheeese...” Father Time moaned in his sleep. “Olld... stinnky... cheeeese...”

Sogwa jumped
high up, and hollered “HEY, WAKE UP!” right into Father Time’s ear.

Old Father
Time went “unh!” He snapped open his eyes, and fell five feet butt-first onto
the pillow. He landed on the pillow at the same moment that Sogwa landed on her
feet.

The air in
the pillow leaked out with a loud FWEEEeee...

Sogwa and
Old Father Time politely kept quiet while the pillow had its say. When it was
done, they talked.

Father Time
said, “I must have been dreaming.”

Sogwa said,
“You said that time is cheese.”

“How silly!”
Father Time laughed, then said, “I change my mind.”

“Then what is
Time?”

“Change of
mind.”

Just then
Sogwa noticed something funny. She noticed that her upper eyelids were touching
her lower eyelids. Her eyes were shut, closed tight shut, and they’d been shut
for awhile; yet she could see Old Father Time as plain as day.

Somehow he
didn’t look so old anymore. Father Time, now much younger, smiled and waved at
Sogwa.But how could she see him so well
with eyes tight shut?

“Oh!” said
Sogwa. “I must be dreaming!”

So she
opened her eyes.She opened
her eyes and she saw.

She saw that
she was at Fort Funston.

She was at
Fort Funston, in the secret clubhouse clearing.

She was in
the secret clubhouse clearing, and Time had started up again.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The preceding blog ends a series of poetry posts. I'll end this week with three stories starring Sogwa, my daughter's favorite cat-doll, and Mischief, her batty friend.

******************************

The Pirate Gold Adventure

Sogwa and
Mischief met one day in the City That Only Kids Can See, also called the Kiddy
City. They were shopping for Halloween, the Kiddy City’s biggest holiday.
Halloween there is celebrated twice; with trick-or-treating and with freaky
house parties.

Sogwa said,
“Maybe I’ll get a pirate costume.”

Mischief
said, “Then what’ll I go as?”

Sogwa
teased, “Why not a parrot?”

Mischief
said, “No!”

Sogwa mewed,
“Aw, you’d make a great pirate’s parrot!”

Mischief
squeaked, “No!! Besides, there were no pirates!”

“Oh yes
there were!”

“Oh no there
weren’t!”

Sogwa said,
“Yes there were, and I can prove it by finding pirate gold.”

Mischief
said, “You’ll never find any pirates, or any pirate gold.”

“You wanna
bet?”

“All
right, you’re on!” said Mischief. “For what stakes?”

Sogwa
thought about it. “How about, one hour tidying up the winner’s house.”

“And the
winner gets a new movie disc?”

“Deal!”

So that was
their bet.

But how to
learn the truth about pirates and their gold? Sogwa and Mischief went to visit
their friend, the Sphinx Cub, daughter of the Sphinx, who knew kiddy-riddle
magic.

The Sphinx
Cub told them, “To learn the truth about pirates and their gold, go to the
King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. There summon two cat-god spirits;
one will be good, the other one evil; make sure which one is which! Destroy the
evil spirit, listen to the good spirit, and then take a time trip.”

To speed
them on their way, the Sphinx Cub taught them these riddle-spells; the Chicken,
the Walls, the Fireman, the Days, the Dog, the Elephant, and the Woodchuck.

Sogwa and
Mischief thanked the Sphinx Cub, then left to begin their quest.

A portal
opened, and it took them far away; for they had done the Teleportation Spell.

They
teleported to the base of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. From there they went
through the entrance, and down a dark corridor. Squeaky Mischief lead the way,
seeing by sonar. He took Sogwa down, down, down to the King’s Chamber.

Mischief
said, “Now let’s do the Walls.”

Sogwa said,
“Okay! So riddle me this. What did one wall say to the other?”

Mischief
said, “Meet you at the corner!”

Two spirits
appeared; for they had done the Summoning Spell.

The spirits were twin cat-gods, one
good, one evil. Which one was which?

Sogwa said
to the spirits, “Are you really what you seem to be? Can you prove that you
exist? Maybe you’re a dream, or an illusion, or a trick. Prove to me
that you’re for real!”

The spirit
on the right said, “How dare you question me! I am always right! Obey me!”

The spirit
on the left said, “Of course you can doubt me. Listen, and judge for
yourself.”

With a loud
yowl, Sogwa attacked the spirit on the right. She clawed, she slashed, she
hacked, she did kitty kung-fu. Mischief hung upside-down in a corner and
watched. He was glad to stay out of her way. Soon Sogwa was in a cloud of
shredded ectoplasm.

“Where is
it?” she screeched.

Mischief
said, “It’s gone.”

“I was just
getting started!”

“You’re
done.”

So Sogwa
calmed down, sat down, licked her paws, and purred. She said to the spirit that
was left, “O wise and good spirit, please help us! Find us the pirates and
their gold.”

The good
spirit said, “To learn more about pirate gold, go down that hall.” It pointed
to a hallway, then vanished.

Sogwa and
Mischief went down that hallway. At its end they found a wall, with a map
carved on it. The map was of the pirate’s Caribbean hideout.

Sogwa and
Mischief memorized the map; then they retraced their steps, and left the Great
Pyramid. Once they were under open sky they did the Fireman Riddle.

Sogwa said,
“Riddle me this. Why does a fireman wear red suspenders?”

Mischief
said, “To hold his pants up.”

They flew
off into the air; for they had done the Levitation Spell.

Mischief and
Sogwa flew far and fast. They hurtled a quarter-way around the world, and
landed in the Caribbean, on an island, on a sandy beach. There were no pirates
there anymore; so it was time to do the Days Riddle.

Mischief
said to Sogwa, “Riddle me this. Which month has twenty-three days?”

Sogwa said,
“All of them!”

They
teleported back in time to the pirate days; for they had done the Time-Travel
Spell.

When they
saw the pirates, the pirates saw them. Right away the pirates attacked, waving
cutlasses. To defend themselves, Sogwa and Mischief did the Dog Riddle. Sogwa
said, “Riddle me this. My dog has no nose; so how does he smell?”

Mischief
said, “Terrible!”

A horrible
odor arose; for they had done the Stink Spell. The pirates fled the stench. They
ran to the dock and onto their ship. Once aboard, they aimed their cannons.

To defend
themselves, Sogwa and Mischief did the Elephant Riddle. Mischief said, “Riddle
me this. What time is it when an elephant sits on your fence?”

Sogwa said,
“Time to get a new fence.”

The pirate
ship shattered into flinders; for they had done the Demolition Spell.

The pirates
swam out of the wreckage of their broken ship and paddled to shore. Mischief
said to them, “Surrender now!”

Sogwa said,
“Surrender and we promise to fix your ship!”

How could
the pirates refuse an offer like that? They surrendered.

Mischief
said, “Now tell us! Where’s your pirate gold?”

Darkbeard,
the pirate captain, said, “Our gold?”

Sogwa said,
“Give us the truth!”

Darkbeard
said, “Arrr... the truth?That we can give ye.”

Sogwa
demanded, “What’s the truth?”

Darkbeard
said, “That there be no pirate gold!”

Mischief
said, “None at all?”

“Once
there be, but now no more!”

Sogwa asked,
“What happened to it?”

“We spent
it!”

Mischief
asked, “On what?”

Darkbeard
said, “On worthless junk! On gadgets that break! On talking toys and
gnarly battle cards!On software and
upgrades! On the batteries not included! Arrr! We spent it on sneakers,
baseball caps and T-shirts! We spent it on super-squirters, digital pets and
bling! We spent it on a wide-screen TV! And of course we spent it on candy!”

Sogwa said,
“Candy? But you’re grown men!”

“Aye, candy!
For sugar be rare and precious upon the high seas. There be a fine price for
sweets. Most prized of all be the Food of the Gods!”

Mischief
said, “What’s the Food of the Gods?”

Darkbeard
said, “Chocolate! Well I remember when first I met the chocolate dealer.
He said, the first M&M be free! So I tried one, and ever since then I be
chocolate’s slave!”

Sogwa said,
“Is any gold left at all?”

Darkbeard
said, “What pirate ever saved money? We spent our last rusty zinc cent to buy
half a Skittle. What be worse, that wide-screen TV, which cost a bloody
treasure-chest full of gold, why it showed us an ad, and that ad was for a toy,
and that toy costs two treasure chests full of gold! Arrr! Ye canna win!”
And Darkbeard wept.

But Mischief
said, “What’s in all those barrels that are washing to shore?”

Darkbeard
said, “That trash? It be nothing but our scrimshaw. We had a hundredweight of
fake whale-bone, we had knives, and we had time upon our hands; so we doodled a
bit.”

Sogwa opened
a barrel. She said, “But it’s beautiful!”

And it was.
In their spare time, and on fake whale-bone, the pirates had carved pictures of
fish, and seagulls, and dolphins, and whales, and billowing sails under a sky
full of clouds. The pirate scrimshaw showed pursuits, and battles, and
victories and defeats. Their scrimshaw showed beautiful sunsets and ugly
pirates; and even the ugly pirates were beautiful.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

never said who cleaned up
afterwards.How brave and destructive our heros
were!(I always skipped the battle scenesto find out who won.)Our heros were on a missionand the end justified the means.

But I dreamed of another kind of
story:

a story made of healing;of seedlings bursting pavement;of childhood spring dawn;of close encounters with life;of the wisdom that brings lightand the courage that gives birth.I wanted to sing the saga of peacebut I learned that peace is a true
poemand true poems have no words.

Therefore my peace dream remains
untold,

unknown, mysterious, and true;while the thud-and-blunder
paperbacks(made of real paper)shout their loud red victory dreams.Thus they win a win; but no more.

For true dream is beyond victory.

True dream is beyond dream.The saga of peace ripens in silence.Joy is a song that sings itself
when
life surpasses adventure.

Friday, May 18, 2012

THIS LETTER was sent to protect you
from luck, both good and bad. Receipt of this letter confers immunity to ALL
FORMS of chain-letter bribery and extortion. You are now free to break any
letter chain, without consequence. This works even if you are superstitious.

You may hold onto this Unchain
letter indefinitely, along with the next chain letter that finds its way to
you. You may send copies of this letter to friends; and you may also refuse to
send copies. It makes no difference.

This Unchain letter admits freely
that it is, in fact, a joke; yet it is no less credible than any Chain letter
now in circulation. The following claims are completely baseless and absurd.
Take them or leave them:

An R.A.F. officer received this
letter in the mail; many years later he also received a chain letter. It
promised him riches if he duplicated it, and poverty if he broke the chain.
Foolishly he made 20 copies and sent them to his friends. Four days later he
got a phone call claiming that he had just inherited $23,000,000. However, this
proved to be a wrong number, and the caller hung up.

Naresh Singh of Bombay got a chain
letter threatening him and his loved ones with death if he broke the chain. But
this Unchain letter had gotten to him first; so he wisely decided to use the
chain letter as a substitute for scarce toilet paper. That afternoon, while he
and his family were visiting the marketplace, a crazed fanatic brandished an
AK-47 and attempted to mow down the crowd; but the lunatic had neglected to
load his weapon, so he was quickly taken into custody.

Pablo Fuentes of Lima was under this
Unchain letter's protection when he got a chain letter promising him luck in
the lottery. He sent out copies, and won nothing. Wen Xiao of Taipei received
this letter, along with a chain letter; he took no action, and soon got a new
job at equal pay.

In 1984, a badly faded chain letter
reached a young woman in Ontario. She promised that she would re-type the
letter and send it on; but she delayed doing so. She was plagued by expensive
car repairs until she received this Unchain letter. That very day she bought a
new car, and her repair bills ceased.

YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS LETTER BY
RANDOM CHANCE, NOT FATE.

REMEMBER: YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY FREE TO
IGNORE ALL CHAIN LETTERS FROM NOW ON.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

One day a sage climbed very highAnd asked the mystic midnight sky,“O Universe, will I be missed?Will there be proof that I exist?And will my words traverse the landAnd always be in great demand?And will my name resound so farIt echoes to the faintest star?In short, I ask you; will I beCondemned to immortality?”The earth did shake, the sky did
glowThe Cosmos loudly shouted, “NO!”Yet all its rage left sage unawedWho calmly murmured, “Oh, thank
God!”

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird!
It’s a plane! It’s Poetry!Yes, Poetry! Strange visitor of this
strange planet, Poetry possesses powers
and abilities far beyond those of
mortal men.Poetry can change the course of
mighty rivers, and bend steel with the
bare facts!Poetry is faster than a speeding
bullet, more powerful than a
locomotive,able to leap tall
buildings in a single bound!Poetry fights a never-ending battlefor truth, justice and
liberty;And best of all, Poetry is disguised as a simple
reporter.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Death chased him out of his bed,out of his room,out of his house,out of his mind,out into the anonymous nightwith a belly full of pills,and a head full of light,and heart full of darknessfrom a life full of pain.Death chased him down to groundand he closed his eyes and waitedand Death laughed - - but an angel came.The angel did not hover, nor did she
carol.She was too distraught to be
beautiful.She fluttered and shed feathers.Her raucous squawks kept the whole
city awake.She howled like a copcar in Hell.She zigzagged madly, and thus she
found him.The Angel of Love cried,
"Darling! Hang on!9-1-1 is on the way!"Death fled, pursued by police.Blessed be Love!

II.

Death came hunting for you.

Death surrounded you with its
armies.Death invaded you with its spies.Death attacked you with its weapons.Death snared you, and speared you,
and bagged you.Death took you against your will;Death raped you, and it laughed - - but an angel came.She looked out of your eyes and
chuckled."What fools these mortals
be!" she said."What folly these moralities!Did they think they could jail a
thought?Or silence a word already spoken?And who said dead men tell no tales?Wasn't it a dead man?Is a man matter or mind? Well,is light a particle or a wave?You were never all here anyhow,so come quantum-tunnel out with me.Give me a piece of your mind.Your gracious hosts will never
believethat their prisoner has already
escaped!"So declared the Angel of Clarity.Blessed be Clarity!

III.

Death came hunting for me.

Death didn't stand on ceremony;It just strolled right up and kicked
me in the balls.Yow! For one whole week my right
testis ached.Death whispered in my ear,
"Why?"The sudden pain and swelling
subsided, and I sighed.But the right ball still possessed,
at its lower endA hard lump.Death whispered, "Why?"I had no answer, and Death laughed -
- but an angel came.She grabbed Death by the throatrattled it like a puppet, and flung
it down."Hands off him, you thief!This boy's mine now!Haven't I seen him through worse
than this?Haven't I dragged him right out of
Hell?Wasn't it me who snatched him, with
his worldsafe, whole and unsinged,right out a nuclear war?Haven't I taken him to a hilltopshown him the city by nightand told him maybe we'll live after
all?Behold, O Death! Already he consults
the doctors;already he takes the medicineswhose success makes him believe them
all the more;and already he is better!And still you ask why? Well, I'll tell you!We don't care what your tricks are!We don't care what the odds are!We don't care what you are!Pick a game, any game; we'll play
it!We are fighters and lovers;We choose to be free.We live; it is our joy.How can we explain it?We are beyond belief.O Death, you will never
understand."So spoke the Angel of Hope.Blessed be Hope!